We were unable to speak at the board meeting last evening (Tuesday, April 26, 2005) even though we signed up for the speakers list. It's too bad, since what we wanted to say directly related to the proposed school closures. Because we feel we have an obligation to protect the children of San Francisco from military recruiters, we wanted to bring new light to the role of JROTC and military recruitment efforts, as well as to the billions of tax dollars this and future planned wars will cost--dollars that are being expropriated from our schools and other human and social services.

I am including in this letter an article that appeared in the Washington Post Sunday, April 24, 2005 entitled, "Enrollment in Army ROTC Down in Past 2 School Years. More Officers Now Being Commissioned From Earlier Pool, But Problem Looms" by Josh White. It starts out with the following paragraph: "Nationwide enrollment in the Army's Reserve Officers' Training Corps has slipped more than 16 percent over the past two school years, leaving the program, which trains and commissions more than six of every 10 new Army officers each year, with its fewest participants in nearly a decade." And later in the article, "ROTC graduates account for 56 percent of the more than 68,000 officers on active duty." And, towards the end, "Klein said he spends half his time talking to parents about ROTC, dispelling myths, promoting opportunities available to their children and discussing the chances of serving in combat."

Please read this article to understand the real purpose and intent for the ROTC and JROTC programs. In addition, now, the U.S. military is spending multi-millions of dollars on a publicity campaign designed to pressure parents into convincing their own kids to enlist in order to get money for college--money the parents don't have.

Not only is it a lie that ROTC and JROTC are not for recruitment, it is a lie that joining the military will help pay for college. A small percentage of veterans actually ever receive this benefit. It is also dishonest to claim that military service is the only way to finance college, since there are many financial aid and scholarship programs available to students without the financial resources to go to college. But how can we expect the truth from a government that declares war based upon lies they invent? This is murder, not war!

More importantly, billions of our tax dollars are being spent on this war and on the planning of new wars that benefit only the wealthy elite our government represents, two thirds of whom pay no taxes at all! And this vast cost in tax dollars that comes from the vast majority of hard working Americans is tearing the guts out of the funding of the schools their own children attend. The cost of this and all other planned wars is ravaging all public programs and social services financed by working people's tax dollars. And causing the war has resulted in over 1600 American deaths and tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths. We must be clear. This war is not only wrong and immoral, it is the direct reason for having to close schools in San Francisco and across the country.

The argument on the local level for closing the schools--low enrollment--is false and based upon the avoidance of the basic reality of these very war costs--a simple case of denial on the part of all those concerned. How else can a group of educators talk about low enrollment being a problem? It's an opportunity to cut class sizes! This is what our children need. The war is standing in their way, our way and the way of the future of our planet.

The war spending impacts even the parents who can afford to send their kids to college--they are paying more for less--broken down buildings, antiquated equipment, bigger class sizes and stressed out teachers.

It is up to us to turn this around! And we are starting right here in San Francisco, the Antiwar City! We are tired of a world filled with war. We are tired of the assault on our civil rights and civil liberties. We want our children to grow up in a healthy, happy environment filled with freedom, democracy and opportunities for all of our children to develop their creative genius. The power of the human spirit is its ability to come up with non-lethal and non-combative ways to solve problems and resolve disputes. Do we want to teach our children the force of violence and torture; or the power of rational, peaceful, humane, creative thinking, reasoning and social intercourse?

To that end, we want all ties to the military cut in the San Francisco Unified School District. We want this Board to join with the majority of people in San Francisco to demand an end to the war; an end to military recruiting--including the JROTC programs funded by the district.

Instead, we want to see this Board rally administrators, teachers, students and their parents to work toward ending the war and bringing all U.S. troops home now. We want all of us to join together to demand that the money spent on war go, instead, to education, health, housing and social welfare for all people!

At the February 22, 2005 Board meeting, it was suggested by Mark Sanchez that the Board members set up a committee to oversee the elimination of the JROTC program. As we recall, the Board voted in favor of this proposal. We want to know what progress is being made on setting up this committee. We would also like to propose that members of the community antiwar organizations that brought this issue up and are already involved in carrying out the fight to rid the schools of both JROTC, ROTC and all military recruitment efforts be represented on this committee.

Cutting all ties to the military is a crucial first step toward these ends. All the members of the Board should be obliged to acknowledge the 63 percent majority vote by San Francisco voters last November to Stop the war and bring the troops home now. This is the vote, also, of San Francisco's parents with children in the public schools! The majority has spoken and the board must act on behalf of the majority of parents and children of the district.

Again, the Bay Area United Against War submits its resolution to the Board for adoption. (Included with this letter.)

Yours for peace,

Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War (BAUAW)Cristina Gutierrez, Director, Companeros del Barrio Children's Center and BAUAWCarole Seligman, Bay Area United Against War (BAUAW)

Draft Resolution Submitted for Adoption to the San Francisco Board of Education

WHEREAS, the United States military is actively recruiting high school students into the military to fight in Iraq; andWHEREAS, many young San Francisco high school alumni are presently serving in military units fighting in Iraq; andWHEREAS, it is San Francisco City policy by virtue of Proposition N, to bring all U.S. troops home from Iraq now; andWHEREAS, over 1,600 U.S. soldiers and approximately 100,000 Iraqis have been killed in this war and over 10,000 U.S. soldiers and unknown thousands of Iraqis have been wounded; andWHEREAS, the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the war have robbed our children of resources that should be spent on education and other human needs; andWHEREAS, military presence in our schools legitimizes the message that violence is acceptable; THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT:It shall be the policy of the San Francisco Board of Education to cut all ties with the United States military, including, but not limited to: Ending military recruitment on campuses; ending the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC); and guaranteeing that all students and parents are informed of their right to deny military recruiters access to their names, addresses and telephone numbers.

Nationwide enrollment in the Army's Reserve Officers' Training Corps has slipped more than 16 percent over the past two school years, leaving the program, which trains and commissions more than six of every 10 new Army officers each year, with its fewest participants in nearly a decade.

The decline includes a drop of 10 percent from the 2003-04 school year to the term ending this spring. According to the Army's Cadet Command at Fort Monroe, Va., which supervises ROTC, 26,566 students are enrolled in the program now, down from 29,618 last year and 31,765 in 2002-03, the first full school year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Pre-Sept. 11 enrollments were also higher than they are now.

At the same time, the number of officers commissioned through the program has been increasing, as students who joined ROTC three and four years ago rise to their senior year. But that increase has occurred as the Army has ridden the bubble of larger incoming classes from the beginning of the decade. Army and ROTC officials are concerned that flagging enrollments could soon strain the program's ability to meet its annual quotas for commissioned officers.

While it is unclear precisely why enrollments have dropped, Army officials and defense experts say the decline probably mirrors the problems the Army has had recruiting generally, as some potential recruits fear they will be sent into a war zone after earning their second-lieutenant bar at graduation. Some ROTC programs, such as the one at the University of New Hampshire, have seen more than 80 percent of their graduates fight in Afghanistan or Iraq over the past few years, and the Army's increasing need for young, capable officers has been drawing more ROTC graduates into the fighting ranks.

Army brass say their focus on officer recruitment is not strictly on the numbers of those enrolled, but rather on recruiting better-qualified cadets who are more likely to stay in the program and receive a commission. Maj. Gen. Alan W. Thrasher, who leads the Army Cadet Command, said the issue is "quality over quantity."

"It is a balancing act, that we want to make sure we're bringing in adequate numbers so that at the end of the day we'll be able to make our mission," Thrasher said in a recent interview. "We're always looking at our drop, but we also look at our ability to increase our retention. If we have a huge enrollment number, a large percentage will never make it past a year . . .. At the end of the day, we want to commission only top-quality officers."

Last year, the Army ROTC significantly exceeded the Army's request for 3,900 new officers. Since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began, commissions coming out of Army ROTC have grown from 3,308 in 2001 to 4,408 in 2004 -- an increase of 33.3 percent.

The drop in enrollment, however, concerns some campus recruiters because it could mean a deficit in years to come. ROTC factors in a fair amount of attrition when projecting how many recruits will make it to a commission at the end of their senior year. Non-scholarship students who join as freshmen and sophomores are not obligated to stay with the program; those who remain as juniors and seniors must sign contracts to join the Army upon graduation.

Edwin Dorn, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a former undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said defense officials should have increased their recruiting efforts two years ago.

"During Vietnam, the services lost a large number of very good but very disgruntled junior officers, and it took many years to recover," Dorn said. "The services may be creating a problem that will be with them for another generation if they don't solve the officer recruiting problem. You can't go out and hire a bunch of majors;you have to have commissioned a group of second lieutenants years earlier."

According to the Army, about 38,000 current officers were commissioned through ROTC as of last year, and more than 80 percent of them serve as majors or lower-ranking officers. ROTC graduates account for 56 percent of the more than 68,000 officers on active duty.

The Navy ROTC and Air Force ROTC programs have also experienced declines in enrollment since the surges after Sept. 11, 2001, but both programs' enrollments are larger than before the terrorist attacks. Air Force ROTC has slipped 10 percent since the 2002-03 school year -- when there was a decade-long high of 17,513 students -- but its current enrollment of 15,793 is 10 percent higher than that for the 2001-02 school year. Navy ROTC fell 1.4 percent over the past two school years.

Retired Lt. Col. Marian R. Hansen Kaucheck, recruiting operations officer at Arizona State University's Sun Devil Battalion, said her unit will commission nearly double its quota this year but that next year might not look so good. She said that to commission 20 officers into the Army, she might need 50 to 60 people enrolled at the start, figuring that nearly two-thirds of enrollees will leave the program or not meet physical requirements for a commission.

"The bottom line is, if you don't have enough enrolled in the basic course to allow for normal progression or normal attrition,if you don't start at the beginning, it's going to be hard to be successful," Hansen Kaucheck said. "For me, I understand the numbers are getting harder, which means I have to be very creative in reaching out and touching more students."

At the University of Oklahoma's Sooner Battalion, 1st Lt. Brian Lusty said ROTC recruiting has seen "a really strange couple of years." In early 2002, enrollment increased 200 percent; Lusty, a member of the Oklahoma Army National Guard, said he "looked like a recruiting stud." Then he deployed to Iraq, and upon his return, a large percentage of his recruits had fallen out of the program.

"As the war has drawn out, the numbers have gone down," Lusty said. "Parents are kind of pushing their children away from ROTC."

Maj. Martin Klein, an Army ROTC enrollment officer at Georgetown University, said his battalion, which also serves four other colleges in the District, is seeing fewer prospective cadets come through the doors. But he said those who do show up are more dedicated to serving and more likely to reach a commission. Klein said he spends half his time talking to parents about ROTC, dispelling myths, promoting opportunities available to their children and discussing the chances of serving in combat.

"What I've found is those students who are interested in our program will come to us, talk to us, engage us," Klein said. "Those students who were on the fence, they're just not coming anymore."

According to a U.S. military image study published in August, the three key barriers for prospective ROTC recruits were making a commitment to going on active duty after graduation, possibly ending up in combat and losing too many years to an Army contract.

Also mirroring general Army recruitment numbers for enlisted soldiers, African American enrollment in Army ROTC has dropped significantly over the past few years. This school year, 3,328 African American students are in the program, down 18 percent from last year and down 34 percent from a high of 5,044 in the 2001-02 school year. Army studies last year showed that the war in Iraq was more unpopular in the black community and served as a deterrent to enlisting.

With the 2004 elections in the can, and people conditioned to accept the results as a kind of 'act of heaven', the other shoe has fallen.

With amazing quickness, sound and fury, the poor and working people of the country were rewarded for their exercise of democracy by the promotion and passing of the recent bankruptcy bill -- an Act of Congress that makes it far more difficult for poor folks to declare bankruptcy, and became but the latest windfall for big business.

The Senate version of the bill, called the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, proved, once again, that you can't tell a bill by its name.

In the bill, banks and credit card companies get all the 'protection'; for debtors and consumers, they get more and more debts, that can no longer be written off.

Before these amendments, Chapter 7 was used by those who were least able to pay their creditors, to wipe away excessive debts, and get a fresh start. Chapter 13 was used to set up repayment plans, but at a substantially reduced rate.

The new amendments have reset the bar for Chapter 7, making it very difficult if not virtually impossible for most folks to qualify for debt relief. Those folks who were once able to make Chapter 7 will now be relegated to Chapter 13, a court-supervised repayment plan that can last for years!

Under the new law, people would be forced to attend credit counseling classes (that they would have to pay for!), there will also be higher bankruptcy fees because more court time means more lawyers.

Nor should we labor under the illusion that 'liberals' in the Democratic Party stood on the side of the working poor: 18 Senate Democrats joined in a bipartisan boon to business by voting for the bill.

In an age when manufacturing jobs are disappearing by the millions, and the remaining jobs are in the lower-paying service economy, the burden for people to scrape by can only increase.

Add to this the White House aim to 'reform' Social Security, and the outlines begin to become clear.

This is what 'bipartisanship' really looks like -- a naked betrayal of the average, working person, and service for those who can afford them.

The bank and credit card companies (which are often, one and the same) paid for their corporate politicians back during the last congressional elections.

This is their big payoff.

You get what you pay for.

While the media went bonkers on the tragic Terri Shiavo case, the Senate made it harder and harder for people to pay for and discharge debts from extraordinary medical expenses, if their family faced the same situation!

With rising costs rushing into the nation's economy daily, and falling wages, the burdens of millions of Americans to make their way in life can only deepen and worsen.

How can Congress claim to care about one woman, when they clearly don't give a damn about millions?

As they voted to amend and tighten the bankruptcy laws, they rejected a bill that would have set a ceiling on credit card interest rates of 30%!

Was that a 'consumer protection' measure?

When both major political parties are corporate parties, it is the corporations that always wins, and the average, working, or poor person that always loses.

That is our grim reality. And it will not change, until men and women, white, Black, Hispanic, Indian, join together, and work together.

Copyright 2005 Mumia Abu-Jamal

---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

3) Just a quick update on Campus Recruitment work on Bay Area campuses.

1. SFSU administration is pressing charges against three students and two student organizations (Students Against War and the International Socialist Organization) for the March 9 counter recruitment protest. The National Lawyers Guild is working with the students to fight the charges.

2. City College Students Against War are having a speak-out against recruiters and in defense of the SFSU students on this Friday at Noon at CIty College of San Francisco.

3. At UC Berkeley last Thursday, 100 students and supporters rallied against Marine recruiters at a career fair. A potential civil disobedience plan was called off because, in the wake of the police assault on the UC Santa Cruz Tent City Students on Tuesday, the Berkeley administration was planning a similar attack, and the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition decided not to walk into that trap. Instead, 60 Berkeley students filed into the career fair in sign-file and confronted the recruiters one at a time, challenging their anti-gay policies and the war in Iraq. This took over an hour and effectively shut down the Marines operation for most of the day.

4. UC Santa Cruz administrators sent police to brutalize students at a "Tent City" protest on campus last week which sought to highlight attacks on public education spending and the increasing Pentagon budget. While this protest was not limited to demands around counter-recruitment, it did come only a few weeks after UCSC students kicked the military off campus at a boisterous protest. 18 Tent City protesters were arrested and many were injured with baton blows and pain compliance holds.

Cheers,Todd ChretienISO

Yahoo! Groups Links

To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MOOS-BAY/

5) Keeping Part of the Park Off Limits to the Madding Crowd By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS New York Times [New York, NY] April 27, 2005http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/27/nyregion/27park.html

The city's Parks Department wants to limit gatherings on the Great Lawn inCentral Park to 50,000 people, a move that would end an era in whichhundreds of thousands of people turned to the park as a place to protest, orto see the pope, Pavarotti and Simon and Garfunkel, officials saidyesterday.

The proposal, which has not been widely disseminated and requires no otherapproval but the department's, would also cap the number of events on theGreat Lawn to six each year, with four of those reserved for the annualperformances of the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. Parksofficials say those musical programs draw "passive" audiences who go easy onthe lawn's Kentucky bluegrass.

The other two events would have to be held during a four-week period inAugust and September.

The Parks Department said the rules would simply formalize what has been itsinformal policy since 1997, when the city spent $18.2 million to restore the13-acre Great Lawn, which for years had been more dust bowl than lawn.

But Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, acknowledged that he was led toformalize the rules by the city's court battle last summer with an antiwargroup that sought to use the lawn for a rally that was expected to draw asmany as 250,000 people.

"You have two choices," Mr. Benepe said. "You can have unlimited,large-scale events, or you can have nice grass, but you can't have both.

"It was unlimited use that destroyed the park in the old days, so if youwant the city's backyard to be in good shape, you have got to putlimitations on its use," the commissioner said.

Opponents of the policy, however, say something is lost if Luciano Pavarotticannot sing before a half-million people in the park as he did in 1993, orthe pope can no longer celebrate Mass for 125,000, as John Paul II did in1995.

"We've got to make sure, that No. 1, the limits are for the greater good andnot meant to deter certain groups," said Councilwoman Helen Foster,chairwoman of the City Council's Parks and Recreation Committee. "We've gotto make sure that we are not limiting what we expose New York City residentsto."

The Parks Department published its proposed new rules on April 18 in TheCity Record, a daily publication in which city agencies announce publichearings. The policy change would not require the approval of the Council,although the department has scheduled a public hearing on the issue for May20 at the Chelsea Recreation Center.

Currently, the Parks Department does not expressly limit the number ofpeople allowed on the Great Lawn for gatherings, and there are no limits onthe number of events held there. Permission to assemble is granted case bycase when groups apply for permits. Any group with more than 20 peoplerequires a permit.

The Great Lawn is the only spot in the park where gatherings of more than50,000 people have been permitted in recent years. A concert by thePhilharmonic or an opera performance draws a maximum of about 50,000,representatives from the organizations said; the last big event on the lawn,a 2003 concert by the Dave Matthews Band, drew 80,000.

The new policy would limit events on the lawn to a four-week period from thethird week of August through the second week of September, with theexception of the opera and Philharmonic performances, which are heldannually in June and July. Mr. Benepe said the monthlong window for newevents was intended to give the grass a chance to recover between biggatherings.

A spokesman for United for Peace and Justice, which lost its fight with thecity last August to hold a huge antiwar rally on the Great Lawn during theRepublican National Convention, said the proposed rules were aimed squarelyat preventing groups like his from holding large political demonstrations inthe park.

"This would set in stone their institutional attitude about protests," saidthe spokesman, Bill Dobbs. "In Manhattan, nearly every square foot iscovered with buildings, so the park is the town common, where people haveassembled for generations. Now the Bloomberg administration is seeking tomaintain it as a lawn museum."

The group has received a permit for a May 1 rally at the HeckscherBallfields in the park to support global nuclear disarmament. Mr. Dobbs saidthat as many as 50,000 people were expected to attend the protest. Thefields are scheduled to be restored this fall, and after that largegatherings there would be prohibited, parks officials said.

Mr. Dobbs said it was particularly unfair that so many of the large-scaleevents on the Great Lawn would be opera and Philharmonic performances. "Togive the symphony and opera four of the six - the bulk of them - shows theclass of people whose interests are being protected," he said.

But the city makes distinctions between what it calls passive users (thosewho sit, drink wine and listen) and active users (those who dance, march orsimply stand on the park's delicate grass).

Mr. Benepe said that while classical-music lovers have caused almost no harmto the Great Lawn over the years, the Dave Matthews concert caused $120,000worth of damage to the grass.

"The day of the mega-event is over in Central Park," said Mr. Benepe, whoadded that the Matthews concert had taught him a lesson.

In the park yesterday, the proposed changes received a mixed reaction.

Morgan Storms, 26, a fifth grade teacher, said the rules did not make muchsense.

"It seems awfully silly to base a law like that on grass that will growback," said Ms. Storms. "It's like cutting your hair. It grows back, right?"

But Gavin Keeler, 42, a legal assistant playing soccer with his two youngdaughters, remembered the bad old days, when a walk across the Great Lawnsometimes meant a face full of dust.

"If it's a question between six events a year that are not going to harm it,and a couple of free-for-alls that are going to harm it, I'll take thelimits," he said.

--Matthew Sweeney contributed reporting for this article.

UNITED FOR PEACE & JUSTICE | 212-868-5545

To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ufpj-news/

We were unable to speak at the board meeting last evening (Tuesday, April 26, 2005) even though we signed up for the speakers list. It's too bad, since what we wanted to say directly related to the proposed school closures. Because we feel we have an obligation to protect the children of San Francisco from military recruiters, we wanted to bring new light to the role of JROTC and military recruitment efforts, as well as to the billions of tax dollars this and future planned wars will costâ€”dollars that are being expropriated from our schools and other human and social services.

I am including in this letter an article that appeared in the Washington Post Sunday, April 24, 2005 entitled, "Enrollment in Army ROTC Down in Past 2 School Years. More Officers Now Being Commissioned From Earlier Pool, But Problem Looms" by Josh White. It starts out with the following paragraph: "Nationwide enrollment in the Army's Reserve Officers' Training Corps has slipped more than 16 percent over the past two school years, leaving the program, which trains and commissions more than six of every 10 new Army officers each year, with its fewest participants in nearly a decade." And later in the article, "ROTC graduates account for 56 percent of the more than 68,000 officers on active duty." And, towards the end, "Klein said he spends half his time talking to parents about ROTC, dispelling myths, promoting opportunities available to their children and discussing the chances of serving in combat."

Please read this article to understand the real purpose and intent for the ROTC and JROTC programs. In addition, now, the U.S. military is spending multi-millions of dollars on a publicity campaign designed to pressure parents into convincing their own kids to enlist in order to get money for college--money the parents don't have.

Not only is it a lie that ROTC and JROTC are not for recruitment, it is a lie that joining the military will help pay for college. A small percentage of veterans actually ever receive this benefit. It is also dishonest to claim that military service is the only way to finance college, since there are many financial aid and scholarship programs available to students without the financial resources to go to college. But how can we expect the truth from a government that declares war based upon lies they invent? This is murder, not war!

More importantly, billions of our tax dollars are being spent on this war and on the planning of new wars that benefit only the wealthy elite our government represents, two thirds of whom pay no taxes at all! And this vast cost in tax dollars that comes from the vast majority of hard working Americans is tearing the guts out of the funding of the schools their own children attend. The cost of this and all other planned wars is ravaging all public programs and social services financed by working people's tax dollars. And causing the war has resulted in over 1600 American deaths and tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths. We must be clear. This war is not only wrong and immoral, it is the direct reason for having to close schools in San Francisco and across the country.

The argument on the local level for closing the schools--low enrollment--is false and based upon the avoidance of the basic reality of these very war costs--a simple case of denial on the part of all those concerned. How else can a group of educators talk about low enrollment being a problem? It's an opportunity to cut class sizes! This is what our children need. The war is standing in their way, our way and the way of the future of our planet.

The war spending impacts even the parents who can afford to send their kids to college--they are paying more for less--broken down buildings, antiquated equipment, bigger class sizes and stressed out teachers.

It is up to us to turn this around! And we are starting right here in San Francisco, the Antiwar City! We are tired of a world filled with war. We are tired of the assault on our civil rights and civil liberties. We want our children to grow up in a healthy, happy environment filled with freedom, democracy and opportunities for all of our children to develop their creative genius. The power of the human spirit is its ability to come up with non-lethal and non-combative ways to solve problems and resolve disputes. Do we want to teach our children the force of violence and torture; or the power of rational, peaceful, humane, creative thinking, reasoning and social intercourse?

To that end, we want all ties to the military cut in the San Francisco Unified School District. We want this Board to join with the majority of people in San Francisco to demand an end to the war; an end to military recruiting--including the JROTC programs funded by the district.

Instead, we want to see this Board rally administrators, teachers, students and their parents to work toward ending the war and bringing all U.S. troops home now. We want all of us to join together to demand that the money spent on war go, instead, to education, health, housing and social welfare for all people!

At the February 22, 2005 Board meeting, it was suggested by Mark Sanchez that the Board members set up a committee to oversee the elimination of the JROTC program. As we recall, the Board voted in favor of this proposal. We want to know what progress is being made on setting up this committee. We would also like to propose that members of the community antiwar organizations that brought this issue up and are already involved in carrying out the fight to rid the schools of both JROTC, ROTC and all military recruitment efforts be represented on this committee.

Cutting all ties to the military is a crucial first step toward these ends. All the members of the Board should be obliged to acknowledge the 63 percent majority vote by San Francisco voters last November to Stop the war and bring the troops home now. This is the vote, also, of San Francisco's parents with children in the public schools! The majority has spoken and the board must act on behalf of the majority of parents and children of the district.

Again, the Bay Area United Against War submits its resolution to the Board for adoption. (Included with this letter.)

Yours for peace,

Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War (BAUAW)Cristina Gutierrez, Director, Companeros del Barrio Children's Center and BAUAWCarole Seligman, Bay Area United Against War (BAUAW)

Draft Resolution Submitted for Adoption to the San Francisco Board of Education

WHEREAS, the United States military is actively recruiting high school students into the military to fight in Iraq; andWHEREAS, many young San Francisco high school alumni are presently serving in military units fighting in Iraq; andWHEREAS, it is San Francisco City policy by virtue of Proposition N, to bring all U.S. troops home from Iraq now; andWHEREAS, over 1,600 U.S. soldiers and approximately 100,000 Iraqis have been killed in this war and over 10,000 U.S. soldiers and unknown thousands of Iraqis have been wounded; andWHEREAS, the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the war have robbed our children of resources that should be spent on education and other human needs; andWHEREAS, military presence in our schools legitimizes the message that violence is acceptable; THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT:It shall be the policy of the San Francisco Board of Education to cut all ties with the United States military, including, but not limited to: Ending military recruitment on campuses; ending the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC); and guaranteeing that all students and parents are informed of their right to deny military recruiters access to their names, addresses and telephone numbers.

Nationwide enrollment in the Army's Reserve Officers' Training Corps has slipped more than 16 percent over the past two school years, leaving the program, which trains and commissions more than six of every 10 new Army officers each year, with its fewest participants in nearly a decade.

The decline includes a drop of 10 percent from the 2003-04 school year to the term ending this spring. According to the Army's Cadet Command at Fort Monroe, Va., which supervises ROTC, 26,566 students are enrolled in the program now, down from 29,618 last year and 31,765 in 2002-03, the first full school year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Pre-Sept. 11 enrollments were also higher than they are now.

At the same time, the number of officers commissioned through the program has been increasing, as students who joined ROTC three and four years ago rise to their senior year. But that increase has occurred as the Army has ridden the bubble of larger incoming classes from the beginning of the decade. Army and ROTC officials are concerned that flagging enrollments could soon strain the program's ability to meet its annual quotas for commissioned officers.

While it is unclear precisely why enrollments have dropped, Army officials and defense experts say the decline probably mirrors the problems the Army has had recruiting generally, as some potential recruits fear they will be sent into a war zone after earning their second-lieutenant bar at graduation. Some ROTC programs, such as the one at the University of New Hampshire, have seen more than 80 percent of their graduates fight in Afghanistan or Iraq over the past few years, and the Army's increasing need for young, capable officers has been drawing more ROTC graduates into the fighting ranks.

Army brass say their focus on officer recruitment is not strictly on the numbers of those enrolled, but rather on recruiting better-qualified cadets who are more likely to stay in the program and receive a commission. Maj. Gen. Alan W. Thrasher, who leads the Army Cadet Command, said the issue is "quality over quantity."

"It is a balancing act, that we want to make sure we're bringing in adequate numbers so that at the end of the day we'll be able to make our mission," Thrasher said in a recent interview. "We're always looking at our drop, but we also look at our ability to increase our retention. If we have a huge enrollment number, a large percentage will never make it past a year . . .. At the end of the day, we want to commission only top-quality officers."

Last year, the Army ROTC significantly exceeded the Army's request for 3,900 new officers. Since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began, commissions coming out of Army ROTC have grown from 3,308 in 2001 to 4,408 in 2004 -- an increase of 33.3 percent.

The drop in enrollment, however, concerns some campus recruiters because it could mean a deficit in years to come. ROTC factors in a fair amount of attrition when projecting how many recruits will make it to a commission at the end of their senior year. Non-scholarship students who join as freshmen and sophomores are not obligated to stay with the program; those who remain as juniors and seniors must sign contracts to join the Army upon graduation.

Edwin Dorn, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a former undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said defense officials should have increased their recruiting efforts two years ago.

"During Vietnam, the services lost a large number of very good but very disgruntled junior officers, and it took many years to recover," Dorn said. "The services may be creating a problem that will be with them for another generation if they don't solve the officer recruiting problem. You can't go out and hire a bunch of majors;you have to have commissioned a group of second lieutenants years earlier."

According to the Army, about 38,000 current officers were commissioned through ROTC as of last year, and more than 80 percent of them serve as majors or lower-ranking officers. ROTC graduates account for 56 percent of the more than 68,000 officers on active duty.

The Navy ROTC and Air Force ROTC programs have also experienced declines in enrollment since the surges after Sept. 11, 2001, but both programs' enrollments are larger than before the terrorist attacks. Air Force ROTC has slipped 10 percent since the 2002-03 school year -- when there was a decade-long high of 17,513 students -- but its current enrollment of 15,793 is 10 percent higher than that for the 2001-02 school year. Navy ROTC fell 1.4 percent over the past two school years.

Retired Lt. Col. Marian R. Hansen Kaucheck, recruiting operations officer at Arizona State University's Sun Devil Battalion, said her unit will commission nearly double its quota this year but that next year might not look so good. She said that to commission 20 officers into the Army, she might need 50 to 60 people enrolled at the start, figuring that nearly two-thirds of enrollees will leave the program or not meet physical requirements for a commission.

"The bottom line is, if you don't have enough enrolled in the basic course to allow for normal progression or normal attrition,if you don't start at the beginning, it's going to be hard to be successful," Hansen Kaucheck said. "For me, I understand the numbers are getting harder, which means I have to be very creative in reaching out and touching more students."

At the University of Oklahoma's Sooner Battalion, 1st Lt. Brian Lusty said ROTC recruiting has seen "a really strange couple of years." In early 2002, enrollment increased 200 percent; Lusty, a member of the Oklahoma Army National Guard, said he "looked like a recruiting stud." Then he deployed to Iraq, and upon his return, a large percentage of his recruits had fallen out of the program.

"As the war has drawn out, the numbers have gone down," Lusty said. "Parents are kind of pushing their children away from ROTC."

Maj. Martin Klein, an Army ROTC enrollment officer at Georgetown University, said his battalion, which also serves four other colleges in the District, is seeing fewer prospective cadets come through the doors. But he said those who do show up are more dedicated to serving and more likely to reach a commission. Klein said he spends half his time talking to parents about ROTC, dispelling myths, promoting opportunities available to their children and discussing the chances of serving in combat.

"What I've found is those students who are interested in our program will come to us, talk to us, engage us," Klein said. "Those students who were on the fence, they're just not coming anymore."

According to a U.S. military image study published in August, the three key barriers for prospective ROTC recruits were making a commitment to going on active duty after graduation, possibly ending up in combat and losing too many years to an Army contract.

Also mirroring general Army recruitment numbers for enlisted soldiers, African American enrollment in Army ROTC has dropped significantly over the past few years. This school year, 3,328 African American students are in the program, down 18 percent from last year and down 34 percent from a high of 5,044 in the 2001-02 school year. Army studies last year showed that the war in Iraq was more unpopular in the black community and served as a deterrent to enlisting.